I've been giving the Fuji HS10 some serious consideration. However, I have serious concerns and the cons for me are at the moment outweighing the pros.

1) The price in the UK is £400. I can, however, get this down to £337.

2) I noticed someone here criticise image quality, especially with macro and supermacro shots. The shots I saw were quite appauling and my Panasonic can do much better. However, I felt possibly he'd bought a faulty camera.

3) I'm concerned with picture distortion at extended zoom. How does the camera fair?

4) Steve's digicam review said any high sensitivity settings past ISO 800 were pretty much pointless. I do like doing low light stuff, also noise at low ISO is a concern. I thought that a CMOS sensor would offer me more at high ISO.

To get round this, how does it fair with low ISO, wide aperture and long shutter opening times (this is covered by the Panasonic's starry sky mode)?

5) There have been concerns with camera IQ.

Three reasons for looking at this camera were the wide range of zoom and the high shooting speed (at least with JPEG - I know RAW will be slow). However, if the above concerns prove to be true, they seem to negate the reasons for me looking at this camera and hit exactly on what I want out of it.

In each of the points I bring up, it seems (bar shooting speed and being able to get long telephoto zoom without a teleconvertor - I use a TCON 17 with my Panasonic when necessary) it give me no advantage over what I already have.

I know that it won't compare with an SLR, but I was looking for something that would be better than any of the the so called bridge cameras and I'm concerned that it will not give me that. An all in one package without the extra lenses (i.e. extra weight) needed with DSLR did appeal, as I don't want to cart huge amounts of kit when away from home. By moving to the HS10, the aim was to lower kit by getting rid of the FZ28 / TCON17 combination.

Are some of my concerns unfounded?

I'm familiar with the Fuji cameras being an ex-S7000 / S5600 owner from way back.